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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Adam, Is My Fig Leaf 
On Straight? 



The chartered right to conceal is 
a license to steal 



By 
L. D. HELLER 



Published by 

THE ANTI-BOSS PUBLISHING CO. 

TOLEDO, OHIO 

1906 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Cooiss Received 

JAN 24 F906 

_ Cooyrieht Entry 

/ Glass oc xxc no, 



/ 



Copyright, 1906 
By L. D. HELLER 



All rights reserved 



"KEEP OFF THE GRASS' 



To the boss in politics, the high finance 
thieves, the criminal — called a lawyer, the 
fossilized practice in criminal trials, the 
grafter, the pass giver and taker, the 
rebater, the petit larceny insurance rob- 
bers, the pious fraud in Sunday School 
this book is warmly dedicated by 

The Author. 



INDEX 

AETICLE. PAGE. 

Why, 9 

I A Relic of Barbarism, - - -25 

II The Pleadings in Criminal 

Cases, - 41 

III The Criminal Lawyer, - - 57 

IV The Jurisdiction in Divorce 

Cases, 65 

V Graft, Passes and Rebates, ■ 75 

VI The Machine and Boss-Made 

Judges, 83 

VII The Iniquity of an Imported 

System, 97 

VIII Frazzled Frenzy, - - - - 123 

IX The Hog in Sunday School, - 131 



WHY 



I I WHY I I 

" Adam, is my fig leaf on straight" was 
the first question asked of the first man 
when sin was found to exist in the world. 
It has ever been the anxious inquiry 
where crime lurked in the dark shadows 
and wrong sought to hide its face from 
public view, " Is my fig leaf on straight?" 

Since thieving in all its forms, has 
come to be " the gentleman's game" and 
crime has run riot with grab and graft, 
there has been a woeful lack of fig leavea 
and all good people with one accord cry 
out in very shame at the huge bulk of crime 
rampart and no longer hid from public 
gaze even by a simple fig leaf. 

Brazen criminals stalk in the open in 
shameless nudity. They crown crime with 
golden greed. They spit in the face of 
decency and good morals and cease to hide 



their shame from purity. With shouts of 
lude laughter they fling fig leaves to the 
wind. They calmly survey the ruin they 
have wrought and defiantly demand 
"What are you going to do about it." 

"High finance" is plain stealing re- 
duced to a science which takes it out of 
the commandment as well as the statutes. 
There is no need to ask: Is my fig leaf on 
straight since it is impossible to make 
crime criminal, or punish the thief. 

Why have things come to this pass? 
The answer is easy. Because "the gentle- 
man's game" is played by use of the 
Machine in politics and business. In 
politics the machine is under control of 
the "boss;" in business it is run by the 
" Captains of Industry." The two are 
equal parts of an undivided whole. They 
are the axiom of sin not in the catalogue 
of crime. Things that are equal to the 
same thing are equal to each other and 
both are equal to all thiugs. 

The boss in politics and the captains 
of industry by use of the machine, working 
10 



together, are equal to anything, from steal- 
ing a municipal franchise to controlling a 
product of the world, whether that be the 
fruits of the fields, the fowls of the air or 
every thing that can be extracted from the 
bowels of the earth. The earth is theirs 
and the fullness thereof. The cattle on a 
thousand hills are theirs. The fishes of 
the sea are taken in their nets. The men 
who go down to the sea in ships, likewise the 
ships, are theirs. The marts of the world 
are theirs, for they control the highways 
of sin as well as the seas, the water ways 
and steal (steel) ways of the earth. If 
any other thing of value should bob up 
which they covet it will be theirs. There 
will be no need to "take, steal, or carry 
away." It will be marked "Private" and 
this will be sufficient to pass title. 

Why ? Because fig leaves of sin have 
been relegated to botanical herbariums 
and shelved among legal antiquities. How 
to cashier all criminals to a level with the 
lowest and dress all malefactors in a 
common garb "before" as well as "after 
11 



taking," and make all lawbreakers look 
alike in 'the box" is the purpose of this 
question: " Is my fig leaf on straight." 

The President of the United States, 
who has a habit of looking farther into 
the future than most men can see into the 
past, voiced half the difficulty in a recent 
sj)eech when he said there was not much 
to be hoped for so long as the $1500 
prosecutor was left to cope with the high 
binders of criminal finance. Since the 
President did not point the way and start 
the formation — for there is nothing to re- 
form — backed with the stamp of his high 
approval, it becomes necessary for some 
one to take up the task. 

The criminals of high finance, rampart 
in cloth of gold, must be crushed until 
they stand on all fours with other thieves 
clothed in fig leaves before any salutary 
change is effected. 

The robes of gold can be snatched 

away. The corporation lawyers (who are 

feeding sumptuously and arrayed in fine 

linen while poor prosecutors batten on 

12 



$1500 a year) can be ruled out of the game 
by electing a Defending attorney at $1500 
a year to prepare and conduct the defense 
of all malefactors whether they be high 
finance thieves or thug strikers. 

When the criminal courts are con- 
ducted on a basis as plain and simple as 
the rules of the prize ring and the rules 
of the game are as clearly defined and as 
fairly enforced as in a twenty round slug- 
ing match the best man will win if the 
referee is honest. 

This book was written in 1890. Since 
then the machine has made a President, 
United States Senators, and hordes of 
grafters. Everything has been unmade 
that has attempted to restrict the power 
of the machine. The machine has been 
re- made, more powerful, stronger and 
more hateful. 

This book was never offered for pub- 
lication. Why? Because. Because? Yes. 
Because the public would have none of it. 
At that time the curse had gone forth; 
<; The public be damned" and the public 

13 



took it and never batted an eye. The 
machine was quick to see the public was 
cowed. "The public be damned" became 
the slogan of the boss and the captain of 
industry. The time was ripe to i take 
over all public utilities" and it has since 
been done. Themachinegotinits work and 
the public refused to sit up and take notice* 

The masses thought this work of the 
machine was the outgrowth of new methods 
in business and politics — not so — the 
machine had be^n "taken over" along with 
other things which were not considered 
public utilities. The new set of bosses 
remodeled and repainted the machine. 
Originally it belonged to burglars, thieves, 
highwaymen, train robbers and gangs of 
hold-up-men. 

The new bosses argued thus: "If the 
machine worked well under cover, in re- 
stricted field, it would produce greater 
results in a wider territory where the 
harvest was ripe and more abundant." 

The original owners of the machine 
had their confederates, accessories before 



and after the fact as the case might be. 
These accessories were known as crimi- 
nal lawyers — usually a small fry. 

The present bosses also have their con- 
federates who are always accessory before 
the fact, known as corporation lawyers, 
the brains of the profession. Past Masters 
in interpreting the Magna Charta of the 
Criminal. 

It may be interesting to the reading 
public — who are not lawyers — to know 
what thi3 Magna Charta is. 

1. Criminals have a Constitutional 
right to conceal a crime. 

2. They have a Chartered right to be 
represented by Counsel before as well as 
after the fact. 

3. They have a right to be tried by 
their peers — other thieves. 

These three cardinal virtues of the law 
skilfully interpreted by a criminal lawyer 
according to the rules of a trial court con- 
stitute a license to criminals to commit 
crime; because they have been furnished 
with the means of escape. 



To this Magna Charta must be added 
three great fictions of the law: u The pre- 
sumption of innocence''' cannot be taken 
away until the verdict of guilty has been 
rendered. Guilt must be established ''"be- 
yond a reasonable doubt." "The burden 
of proof is on the State. 

Thus hedged about "the gentleman's 
game" is safe from conviction so long as 
it is defended by the corporation lawyers 
who are always accessory before the fact 
— for they lay the plot and prepare the 
means of escape before the trick is 
turned. 

With the avowed purpose to steal the 
earth, the machine ran down all who op- 
posed it. A venal press ridiculed and 
cartooned all opposition to its bosses and 
their methods. The public refused to hear 
or heed any note of warning, therefore, it 
was knocked down, run over, picked up 
and carried to the nearest drug store, where 
it is now being resuscitated. 

When its fractures have been reduced, 
the dust rubbed out of its eyes and a good 

16 



deal of arnica ruboed into its experience 
it may be able to see tilings as they are. 

The idea that this was a great, big, 
broad, country wide and deep and long 
enough to give every body a chance, has 
received a hard jolt-^since the machine 
made a 'fence" of all public utilities and 
the boss in politics has changed the vot- 
ing place into a Devil's booth where all 
things are sold. 

The law of supply and demand no 
longer fixes the price of bread and meat. 
The wage of the toiling millions is no 
longer determined by u home consump- 
tion'', exports and imports. 

High finance now determines the price 
of all things. For its ounce of dross it 
takes an ounce of gold. And all this has 
come to pass because legalized crime can- 
not be tried and convicted by the worn 
out rules that once obtained in the trial 
of criminals tabooed as breakers of the 
laws. 

We have passed the point where the 
trial was for the purpose of fitting the 

17 



punishment to the crime. We have 
reached the point where the trial must be 
big enough to fit the criminals who have 
outgrown the present procedure. 

The robes of grab and graft must give 
place to the uniform size of fig leaf. If 
the State has the right to sieze the poor 
devils, who steal rather than starve, and 
assign them counsel whether they will or 
no, to assist in giving them a fair trial, it 
has the same right to sieze the rich devils 
who steal from the starving poor and as- 
sign them counsel not interested in their 
escape. In other words take away the 
accessories before the fact who planned 
the escape in advance of the criminal 
act, and cashier ' high finance" to the lev- 
el of lowest crime and justice will be 
done. 

Our criminal procedure is still in a 
state of barbarism. It has not materially 
advanced in two hundred years. Trials 
are conducted upon the theory that it is 
better that ninety- nine of the guilty 
should escape than that one innocent per- 
is 



son should suffer, despite the fact that no 
better chance is offered the innocent to 
escape, than is vouchsafed the public 
that the guilty be punished. 

The theory had a reason behind it 
that has long since passed away. The 
hide -hound profession of law has always 
delighted in fiction, sham pleadings and 
precedent. It's devotees have ever been 
willing to sacrifice common sense to fic- 
tion and sham. Fiction and theory have 
triumphed over justice and progress. 

Reader! if you don't believe this or are 
unwilling to admit the fact when proven 
then this book is not for you. You will 
probably continue to think you have been 
thinking until run down by the machine. 

If you are not three parts coward 
when you have been "quartered" by the 
u Boss" in politics, the " Captain of In- 
dustry", th© u Hogs in Sunday School", 
and the grafters, you will take up two or 
three holes in your belt, get a firmer grip 
on the handful of things you know, re- 
new your allegiance to truth and right 

19 



and determine to see this war on high 
thieving fought to a successful issue, and 
if needs be die with your boots on. 

The loud mouthing of the "Trust 
Busters", the investigations by heads of 
governmental departments will never 
pulverize the boss or put the machine out 
of action. 

The criminal procedure must be adap- 
ted to meet the changed conditions of 
great criminals. It can be made broad 
enough to shield the innocent and strong 
enough to catch and hold the guilty. 
Sham p.'eadings are not allowed in civil 
suits, they ought not to be tolerated in 
criminal trials. 

Criminal courts as now conducted are 
run on the theory of the game of 'Now 
you see it, and now you don't.'" If the 
prisoner's fig leaf is on straight the crimi- 
nal gets away; if not and he is innocent 
he gets it any way. 

The purpose of a trial is to put the 
accused through the rules of the game. 
If his fig leaf is large enough and he is 

20 



shifty enough to keep under cover, he 
wins the game. It all depends upon the 
size of his fig leaf. The "Why" is, why 
not make all fig leaves of the same size 
and pattern by placing the accused in the 
hands of a Defending Attorney whose 
business it is to see that the guilty one is 
convicted, the innocent acquitted. 

Abolish the nonsense of running a 
court for the purpose of allowing the ras- 
cals to get away for fear the innocent 
will not be acquitted. 

Every lawyer knows that his duty to 
his client in any court is to get justice. 
If the criminal lawyer acted on this prin- 
ciple he would be like Othello, his occu- 
pation would be gone. Put an end to 
this game of now you see it and now you 
don't. Take away all accessories before 
the fact in the guise of counsel. Give 
the innocent a chance to make an honest 
defence. 

Compel the guilty to submit to a fair 
trial to determine the degree of crime. 
Give every man a speedy trial, and a 

21 



"square deal". Give every man justice, 
if justice gets him hanged, and there will 
be no more mob law and Judge Lynch 
will be out of a job. There will be no 
more graft or grafters. The fool talk of 
punishing corporations will cease and the 
criminals who control thieving corpora- 
tions will be brought to book. See ? 

The American people through keep- 
ing up the mumping shams and fictions 
of a worn out system in criminal trials 
are the keepers of a lie. The chances to 
escape, the uncertainty of punishment, 
encourage criminals and invite crime. 
The dread of certainty will be a better 
deterrent than the uncertainty of convic- 
tion. The dread of ninety-nine chances 
of conviction to one chance of escape 
will prevent more crime than will the 
punishment of one crime while ninety - 
nine criminals go unwhipped of justice. 
Try it. 



22 



A Relic of Barbarism 



A RELIC OF BARBARISM 

A present day criminal court trial is 
a wonderful reproduction of the 
"bloody assizes" in the days of 
Jeffreys. The same savage, brutal, re- 
volting manners, customs, usages, forms 
of speech, and style of court papers. 
The accused is still presumed to be the 
same ignorant prisoner in the box unable 
to read or write; who enters his plea of 
"Not guilty" by word of mouth because 
he does not possess the intelligence or the 
means of reducing it to writing. 

He may have the cunning of a Ruf us 
Choate or an Aaron Burr, the effrontery 
of a Guitiau, or the stolid indifference of 
a Chicago anarchist; it is all the same. 
His defense is the same plea offered by 
the unlettered barbarian of two hundred 
years ago. 

25 



It is not the purpose of this book to 
give details of criminal law or procedure ; 
but to point out a few customs and show 
the reason for the origin of certain rules 
still in practice while the reason for their 
once existing has long since passed away. 

For instance: the severity of punish- 
ment for the most trivial offence is re- 
sponsible for the rule that it was more 
humane to allow ninety -nine guilty ones 
to escape than that one innocent man 
should be found guilty. 

The unreasonableness of punishment 
was a lame excuse to allow all guilty 
ones to escape if they could; and judges 
winked at any device, flaw or fiction and 
allowed advantage to be taken of any 
technical defect on the part of the state 
to defeat it's case. 

Thus brutality of punishment made 
trickery and fiction a virtue. Every 
form of deception and technicality was 
encouraged and allowed to be taken ad- 
vantage of, because of the inhumanity of 
punishment. 

26 



Every form or devise that ingenuity 
was able to conceive was permissable. 

Criminal trials soon came to mean the 
accused had a right to escape if he could 
and the trial was not for the purpose of 
determining the facts and disclosing guilt 
but just the opposite; to conceal the facts 
and permit the accused to escape if he 
could. 

There was a touch of chivalry behind 
this bloody savagery. The accused not 
being allowed to testify in his own be 
half — disarmed and taken at a great dis- 
advantage — the unwritten higher law 
that all things had a right to live if they 
can was allowed to triumph over the law 
of the realm. 

The accused had a right to escape if 
he could. A man had a right to quibble 
for his life or his limb. 

It is easy to see and understand why 
all these quirks, quibbles and tricks grew 
up and became a part of every defense 
and finally established precedents which 
no judge or court would dare disregard. 

27 



While the right to a more humane de 
fense broadened and the accused was 
given the right to testify in his own be- 
half and his silence can not be used 
against him, and the punishment made to 
fit the crime, yet the prosecution has been 
held to hard and technical rules and the 
avenues of escape have crystalized, wide 
open, and have been studded and but- 
ressed by glittering generalities which 
embody every trick known to the de- 
fense. 

The note following is taken from 
"Ten Years a Police Court Judge", and 
shows the hopelessness of the system by 
one who knew whereof he spoke. 

u Three Famous Things In Zaiv. 1 ' 

"The presumption of innocence. " It 
is greatly to be regretted that the so- 
called presumption of innocence in favor 
of the prisoner at the bar is a pretense, a 
delusion, an empty sound. It ought not 
so to be, but it is. Rufus Choate said 
that 'this presumption is not a mere 

28 



phrase without meaning;' that 'it is in 
the nature of evidence for the defendant;' 
that It is as irresistable as the heavens 
till overcome;' that 'it hovers over the 
prisoner as a guardian angel throughout 
the trial;' that 'it goes with every part 
and parcel of the evidence;' that 'it is 
equal to one witness.' That is just what 
it should be, but just what it is not. Prac- 
tically it is of no avail whatever in the 
trial. The jury tread it under foot; the 
judge the same moment he admits it in 
theory, forgets it in argument. It is a 
dead letter. Nay, so far from being 
merely inoperative, it is not hazardous to 
say that in the trial the presumption is 
reversed. By court and jury, by prose- 
cution, police, and by the public the ac- 
cused is presumed guilty. Let every one, 
as he looks upon a prisoner in the dock, 
carefully inquire of himself and answer 
if this be not so. The reason is plain. 
The whole course of criminal procedure, 
from inception to close, is designed to 
shut out presumptions of innocence and 
invite presumptions of guilt. The secre- 
cy of complaint- making at the magis- 
trate's office, the mysterious inquisition of 
the grand jury room, the publicity of the 



arrest, the commitment to the lock-up, 
the demand of bails the delay of trial, 
enforced silence of defense till prosecution 
has done its worst, are all so many steps 
and strokes to blacken the accused before 
he is permitted to open his mouth to a 
syllable of evidence to break the force of 
the damaging array of circumstances. 
To suppose that the presumptions of in- 
nocence, which unbiased nature prompts, 
is not before this time choked and stran- 
gled to death is an absurdity too gross to 
dispute. The treatment itself of the 
prisoner negatives the presumption. If 
he is presumed innocent, why is he man- 
acled? Why is he put in jail? Why is 
he let out only on bail ? Why, when he 
is put on trial, is he put in the dock ? 
Why does he not have place with the by- 
standers, who are simply presumed inno- 
cent ? The 'presumption' in the presence 
of such things, is a contradiction of 
terms. How can a person be presumed 
innocent who is presumably guilty ? The 
fact that he is restrained of his liberty 
presumes guilt. There is no other con- 
struction to be placed on the restraint. 
Human nature is not capable of any oth- 
er. Yet human nature ought to presume 

30 



innocence till the contrary is proved. 
What then? Shall the mode or order of 
preceeding against suspected violaters of 
law be so modified as to allow human 
nature to be thus generous ? Can it be 
so modified? The object to be attained 
is worthy of a good deal of experiment 
at the risk of a good deal of havoc of old 
time forms and proceedings. "The rea- 
sonable doubt." It would be a happy 
thing for the tryers of criminal causes if 
somebody should succeed in defining a 
'reasonable doubt'. A great felicity it 
would be if only some one should portray 
a reasonable doubt beyond a reasonable 
doubt. Nothing is more glibly spoken 
of than this doubt, yet thsre is nothing 
more doubtful. Lawyers roll it as a 
morsal under their tongues and roll it off 
at juries and justices as if it were a thing 
to be apprehended with as much certain- 
ty as a stark naked fact. But what a 
reasonable doubt is, it is doubtful wheth- 
er they stop to think, or, stopping, form 
any but a doubtful opinion. Should it 
be a matter of opinion at all? Should it 
not be a matter of conviction ? Should 
not every one who is to inquire whether 
he has it, have as absolute idea of what a 

31 



reasonable doubt is as he has of any oth- 
er independent fact in the case ? If the 
case is to turn on a question of reasonable 
doubt, how can it turn aright, unless the 
turning point be ascertained and fixed 
beyond a reas — beyond all question. 
The learning of the books on this subject 
is vast. It begins with the bible — that 
is to say, the book writers make it begin 
there, though it does not appear that the 
inspired writers were sufficiently inspired 
to hit upon the favorite expression. Its 
equivalent, law givers since the time of 
Moses, find in the Mosaic provision, 
which forbade the death penalty till the 
crime 'be told thee, and thou hast heard 
of it, and inquired diligently, and, be- 
hold, it to be true, and the thing certain.' 
(Deut. XVII; 4). This is said to be the 
amplification of Moses as definer of the 
doubt. Modern authorities do not seem 
to have done much better. But it is not 
because they have not tried. One author 
says that 'the presumption of guilt ought 
to amount to such a moral certainty as 
convinces the minds of reasonable men 
beyond all reasonable doubt'. But what 
is the reasonable doubt? Another says 
that 'a reasonable doubt may be described 

32 



by saying that all reasonable hesitation 
in the mind of the triers, respecting the 
truth of the hypothesis attempted to be 
sustained, must be removed by proof. 7 
Another describes it 'as the degree of 
certainty upon which the jurors would 
act in their own grave and important con- 
cerns.' This seems to approach nearer to a 
solution, and resembles a definition once 
heard in a charge to a jury. The judge 
who gave it is admittedly one of the ablest 
and clearest headed jurists who ever set 
upon the bench. He is the man whom 
E-ufus Choate called 'one of the ablest 
minds of the state'. As near as memory 
serves, his words were as follows: 'Just 
what a reasonable doubt is, gentlemen, it 
is not quite easy to say; but you are prac- 
tical men and I instruct you that you 
should be satisfied of the defendant's 
guilt to that degree of certainty which 
you would require for your guidance in 
acting precisively in any grave matter of 
your own within such time as is ordinari- 
ly given to a jury for deliberation in the 
case". Allowing this to be right instruc- 
tion, it is not probable that many, very 
many, are convicted without proof be- 
yond a reasonable doubt. " The burden of 

33 



proof". This is another expression that 
you have a more fixed meaning. Like all 
other expressions nsed familiarly in this 
course, it loses force and weight by com- 
monness. It plays a windy, wordy part in 
all argumentation on questions of fact. To 
the mind of the average hearer it assumes 
the likeness of a harmless sort of a puff 
ball, tossed hither and thither by cunning 
lawyers to mystify the case and the hear- 
er, and, for about the same reason, the 
trier comes to treat it as not of much ac- 
count. How often does the juror give it 
serious thought that the plaintiff is 
weighted with a burden which the de- 
fendant is not — that having asserted a 
thing he should show it to be a fact by a 
preponderance of the evidence? Many 
reason that assertion must be true, other- 
wise it would not have been asserted. 
Some regard ipse dixit, demonstration. 
They look upon denial as despair. To 
them, he who denies seems to be in a fix. 
They never get the better of the first im- 
pression of the first word. But the old 
Roman rule — the proof devolves on him 
who declares not on him who denies — is 
the American rule, and there is no rule 
that ought to be more rigidly in force in 

34 



court or out of court. A righteous ren- 
dering of it would be, let him who can not 
make good what he would assert, hold 
his peace or go forth at his peril. Then 
there would be less holding forth. There 
is too much holding forth. Too much 
there is of heedless, wanton, allegation, 
accusation of a legal sort and of all sorts. 
Rights are rated too low. Reputation is 
reckoned too cheap. It is painful to re- 
late that the law holds reputation in a 
very cheap estimation. Criminal proced- 
ure everywhere is a standing invitation 
to attack it at the public expense, and 
civil procedure afford no adequate reme- 
dy when it is attacked and damaged. A 
suit for libel or slander, however well 
grounded in law, generally leaves the 
aggrieved man worse off than when he in- 
voked the law's aid. Before he can get 
a trial the slander has done its worst, and 
before he can get a verdict he has spent 
thrice the money the law gives him to 
right the wrong he has suffered." 

From Ten Years a Police Court Judge. 
New York. Funk & Wagnalls, 1884. 

Is it any wonder that the lay mind of 
the average juryman fails to grasp the 



charge of the court in a criminal trial, 
when the man who is talking does not 
know what he means and the man who 
listens cannot understand what the man 
who is talking says ? 

These three mystic sayings are a Chi- 
nese Maze to any mind and the longer 
one wanders in this tangle of meaningless 
jargon the more hopelessly is one lost. 

This cunningly devised jangle of 
words is the product of thieves and 
knaves, strung together by crafty lawyers 
and put into the mouths of judges to be- 
wilder the minds of a jury. 

It is legalized fiction, permissable to 
offset the cruelty of barbaric punishment. 

It is a part of the system that com- 
pletes the manner of stating a case on pa- 
per called "the pleadings". 

Until this form of pleading is swept 
away and the State, states its case, in or- 
dinary and concise language and compels 
the defense to answer by j)leading to every 
issuable and material fact in the indictment 
there is no remedy for this barbarism. 

36 



The reader's attention is called to that 
part of the note quoted, referring to the 
allegation of the plea of "Not guilty." 

The learned judge says "The Ameri- 
can Rule is the same as the Roman 
Rule — the proof devolves on him who 
declares not on him who denies." If the 
accused is allow ed-compelled-to state 
what his defense is it puts him in a 
more favorable light before the court and 
jury and the true and fair way to justice 
is open to the defendant. 

He would be asserting his innocence 
in the start and would not be "in a fix". 
He would then be declaring his innocence 
and not denying guilt and the proof of 
this innocence would be proving an af- 
firmative instead of trying to prove a neg- 
ative — the most unsatisfactory of all 
reasoning or proof. 

This subject will be more fully taken 
up in a subsequent chapter. 



37 



The Pleadings in a 
Criminal Case 



THE PLEADINGS IN A 
□ CRIMINAL CASE □ 

♦♦^■The pleadings" are not the argu- 
iJL ments of the lawyers, but the in- 
dictment and the word of mouth 
"Not guilty" of the accused. 

As stated before, this oral plea of 
"Not guilty" was allowed because in the 
days of long ago when this system became 
the law of England the accused could 
neither read nor write and he was al- 
lowed to say in open court "Not guilty" 
as he stood charged in the indictment. 

How senseless it is that we should 
continue to act on the presumption that 
men in this age are still unable to read or 
write and that we are on the same level 
1 of intelligence with a half civilized people. 
Nothing so well illustrates how hope- 
lessly we are bound to the dark aged as 

41 



the senseless jargon mouthed by every 
judge in every court of this land when 
about to pass sentence on the accused 
who has been found guilty. 

Barbaric irony, driveling from the 
mouth of supposed intelligence; "Have 
you anything to say why the sentence of 
this court should not be passed upon you \ 

What if he had anything to say, and 
suppose he should attempt to say it ? If 
he attempted to go into the merits of his 
defense and show why the verdict was 
wrong the court would gravely or savage- 
ly say — which ever best suited the tem- 
per of his honor — "Stop! You have been 
ably represented by counsel, skilled and 
learned in the law, your defense has been 
heard and considered by twelve of your 
peers and they have pronounced you guil 
ty. You cannot be heard to re -open and 
take up the trial of your case so 
ably conducted." 

Why then should the poor devil be 
thus solemnly mocked? Why should he 
be asked this senseless question if he is 

42 



not allowed to meet it with an intelligent 
answer? "0," says the profession of fic- 
tion: "if the court should fail or neglect 
to propound this question before passing 
sentence this would be error and 
ground for reversal by a reviewing court 
and a new trial would have to be 
granted". 

The ignorant layman asks, "If he can- 
not be heard to take up his defense and 
give a reason why sentence should not be 
pronounced why does that booby of a 
judge ask the question?" 

"The law is a sacred mystery," answers 
the professor of fiction. 

u The solemn mysteries of the dark 
ages must be preserved. In olden times 
when the accused could neither read nor 
write, when he could not be heard in his 
own behalf, he was given the right to 
show why sentence should not be passed 
and if he could give a reason he 
might escape". 

But he has the right to testify and be 
heard. He has been heard and found 

43 



guilty. Why should he be insulted or 
goaded into saying something to arouse 
the anger of the judge and get a few ad- 
ditional years for his impudence or a 
short term for his ability to make a few 
smart remarks ? 

The echo answers Why, and the 
echo's answer is because it's a part of the 
game. See? The above judical farce is 
but a part of the judicial fiction and the 
trial from start to finish is a fiasco. It is 
not a trial. It is a miserable pretense 
and sham. It is putting the accused 
through the rules of a game of hide and 
seek to see if he is smart enough 
to get away. 

Is there a remedy ? If so, what is it ? 
There is a remedy; it is this: Put aside 
this worn out indictment and oral plea of 
"Not Guilty'''' and substitute the rational 
reformed pleadings as in civil cases 
where a cause of action is stated inordin- 
ary and concise language and is met by 
an answer in the same ordinary and con- 
cise language with the right of either 



party to amend before judgment or the 
verdict, if substantial justice warrants. 
Where all sham pleadings are abolished 
and the court is at once advised what 
both parties may be heard to offer in 
support of his cause or defense there you 
find justice. Then elect a defending at- 
torney to be paid by the people, whose 
duty it shall be to conduct the defense 
for the purpose of having all testimony 
introduced that a defendant can produce 
in support of the allegations of his an- 
swer. Conduct a defense to the end that 
the defendant may have justice according 
to the rules and established forms of the 
law and not for the purpose of getting the 
accused acquitted under the present prac 
tice regardless of his guilt or innocence. 

Under the present system a criminal 
lawyer is a legalized jail deliverer, a dyn- 
amite thrower, lock picker allowed to 
practice any trick on a jury or brow beat 
the court into any error to secure an ac- 
quittal even though he may know the 
defendant is guilty as Satan. 

45 



Organized criminals, (the original 
owners of the machine which is now in 
the hands of the boss in politics, and cap- 
tains of Industries m the Trusts,) have 
their paid attorney in league with them, 
who may or may not be an accessory be- 
fore the tact, who, when one or more of a 
gang is caught, immediately furnishes 
bail, if a bailable offense, by haviug the 
professional bondsman go on the bond. 
This bondsman is furnished by the attor 
ney for a percent, of the steal. It is done 
in this way. When a trick is about to 
be turned the attorney is notified to be 
on hand for any emergency. If the plans 
miscarry or if any of the gang is caught 
the motion is made for a bond, and the 
criminal is released on bail. If the proof 
is clear or the presumption great that a 
conviction will follow the defendant for- 
feits h"s bond and the professional bonds- 
man pays the forfeit but he does not pay 
it out of his own pocket. All gangs of 
theives have a fund known in the par- 
lance of thieves as n Fall Monty 1 '' which 



means if one of them falls down i. e. gets 
caught, this fall money is used to pay the 
professional bondsman and attorney in 
securing his release or acquital. In this 
case the criminal lawyer is a "legalized 
Fenced a go between who is as fully ad- 
vised that a crime is about to be committed 
before the trick is turned as the public is 
advised after the act has been made known. 
When a man is thus allowed to come in- 
to open court in the guise of a lawyer 
and represent a band of thieves, can it be 
hoped the public will get a square deal 
or the thieves their due? 

When the captains of industry, the 
leaders of a Trust wish to steal any por- 
tion of the earth, corner a product, "take 
over a public utility" amalgamate the 
copper industries, the gold or silver 
mines, coal or steel plants, they operate 
in the same way; only their paid attor- 
neys are always accessories before the 
facts and lay all the plans and avenues of 
escape in case any "Fall Money" is need 
ed if there should happen to be an epi- 



dimic or sporadic reform. Can any man 
in his senses expect, in such a case, the 
public is liable to get a square deal or 
the thieves get anything but a whitewash ? 

Now, it must be plain that a band of 
organized theives, of either class, could 
not so safely carry on theft as a legalized 
crime, for both are the same so far as the 
lawyer in the case cuts a figure, if the de 
fense of criminals were taken out of the 
hands of the criminal lawyers so-called. 

There is no system of court leadings 
devised by man, no trial procedure that 
can be devised and enforced under any 
set of legal rules whereby any prosecu- 
tor, however gifted, can hope to cope 
with one or more of the criminals, in the 
guise of lawyers conducting a defense, 
when they have planned every escape for 
themselves and confederates before the 
crime is committed. 

All wrong doers must be as thorough- 
ly and entirely taken out of the hands of 
their accessories before and after the fact, 
as they are taken into custody of the law. 

48 



If not, the trial is an abortive attempt at 
obtaining the facts, a screaming farce and 
a travesty on justice. 

Of course, a hue and cry will at once 
go up from those criminals called lawyers 
who make a speciality of defending in 
criminal cases, if any change is suggested. 

They will tell you the idea is prepos- 
terous. They will point out that the sys- 
tem of pleading is as old as our civiliza- 
tion; that it is the collected wisdom of 
ages; that any attempted change would 
unsettle all the established decisions and 
precedents of the past; that the pleadings 
are the science of the law; that nothing 
can be devised to take the place of what we 
have; that you must have an issue sharply 
defined and without it there could be no 
trial that would begin some place, and 
end somewhere; that a charge of crime 
can only be met by a denial; that any al- 
legation beyond this denial would be sur- 
plusage or an attempt to plead the evi- 
dence. In short, as the defendant never 
seeks affirmative relief, or is called upon 

49 



to more than negative the allegations of 
the indictment, there is no need of any 
pleading other than "Not guilty". 

All the above was said and a thou- 
sand times more when American lawyers 
suggested the reformed pleadings in civil 
cases which swept away all sham plead- 
ings, and abolished the common law 
forms and brought all cases under a civil 
action stating the case in ordinary and 
concise language. 

There is neither sense nor reason in 
allowing a guilty rascal, whether he be a 
high finance thief or a robber of hen 
roosts, to stand up and say he is not guilty 
and back and fill and trim his sails to 
every breeze until he finds a hole big 
enough to slip through and escape con- 
viction. 

If the guilty man was compelled to 
face a defending attorney who was an 
officer of the law, chosen and elected by 
the people, and state his defense and what 
he could prove to show his innocence or 
what he had to offer in answer to a change 
so 



of rebates or that lie did not break into a 
hen coop in the night time he would be 
facing a different proposition from that of 
telling a schemy, wiley, criminal lawyer 
"just how it was" and the two thieves 
laying their heads together to fool the jury. 
il 0h n but says the aider and abettor 
of theives, burglars, highwaymen and 
murderers that would be taking away 
from the accused the dearest right of Eng- 
lish Constitutional Liberty, the right to 
counsel, the right to confidential relation 
between lawyer and clients. What right 
has a robber, caught with the goods on 
him, to make a "fence" of a lawyer and 
conceal in him the dirty crime and put 
forth this legalized villian to furnish an 
avenue of escape? It is this maudlin sent- 
imentality for crime and criminals that 
kindles the smouldering embers and starts 
the blaze, the light of which leads the 
mob to break down the prison doors and 
riddle the rotten hides of villians with 
bullets or hang them at the nearest tree 
or lamp post. 

51 



It is this right to commit a crime and 
escape punishment, if you can, that makes 
crime of so longlife. It is this right to 
conceal that grants the license to rob, steal, 
and murder. It is this right to be repre 
sented by the accessory before the fact, to 
stand up and say for his Pal "Not Guilty", 
that furnishes a safe margin on which to 
bet that the thief can not be convicted. 

When the pleadings in a criminal trial 
are so stated that the accused is put on 
trial to discover crime and not conceal it, 
when the trial is for the purpose of con- 
victing the thief instead of his running 
the gauntlet of a set of rummy, rotten 
rules, which have outlived the reason for 
their existence, all criminals will look 
alike in the hands of a defending attorney 
and innocence will have a shield of pro- 
tection and guilt will meet a terror that 
will pierce its mask and reveal crime in 
all its ghastliness. The fine spun theories 
of presumptions of innocence, burden of 
proof and reasonable doubts will be re- 
solved into things within reason and the 

52 



riot of crime will find it has run its race 
when its fence has faded away. 



53 



The Criminal Lawyer 



THE CRIMINAL LAWYER 



W 



['hat! A criminal lawyer did you 
say? Has it ever occurred to you 
what that name implies ? Corpora- 
tions employ corporation lawyers; men in 
mercantile business employ commercial 
lawyers; the commerce of the rivers, lakes 
and high seas is safe* guarded by a proctor 
in admiralty; the expectant heir whose 
name does not appear in the last will and 
testament of an ungrateful ancestor goes to 
the will breaker; the man whose fee sim- 
ple in lands is questioned, hies himself to 
the real property lawyer; he who seeks 
equity seeketh a solicitor in chancery; the 
human vampire wiio has betrayed inno- 
cence, trampeled on purity and virtue, and 
forsaken wife and deserted children, re- 
tains the divorce lawyer; the fussy man 
who knows enough law to be a poor law- 
yer and a mean neighbor consorts with the 

57 



pettifoger; the dead beat who lives by the 
sweat of his creditors brow, gets gratu- 
itous advice from the jack -leg shyster 
whose impudence and ignorance are only 
equaled by his client's indigence; and the 
criminal lawyer is the accessory before 
the fact in high finance, the legalized 
partner in theft, burglary, arson, safe- 
blowing, highway robbery and murder, 
particeps criminis in all the deviltry on 
land and sea; who may be retained for 
any purpose and relied upon to misrepre- 
sent anything to win a verdict of "Not 
Guilty". 

Look about you! See who the crimi- 
nal lawyers are. If you were to meet 
one of them alone in the woods, wouldn't 
you instinctively feel for a weapon ? If 
not, then he is the exception to his class. 
Usually he is not the man of high stand- 
ing at the bar. He is not the lawyer in 
whose hand you would want to place the 
settlement of your estate or have act as 
the guardian of your minor children. He 
is usually a hard drinker, a sabbath 

58 



breaker, a non- church, goer, the hail-fel- 
low-well-met with gamblers, bookmakers, 
the consort in strange cities of women of 
shady reputations, the frequenter of sa- 
loons, the companion of men, the mildest 
mannered who ever scuttled a ship or cut 
a throat. 

Yet, when you are apprekended for 
crime, thrown into jail for arson, stealing 
or murder, you entrust your reputation, 
your honor, yea, your life, in the hands 
of this man whose company you shun and 
whose presence in your family would be 
looked upon as association with a moral 
leper. Now this thing, which, like the 
devil, has made itself and which you let 
pass as a man, suddenly becomes the all 
in all, the one thing needful, fair as the 
moon, bright as the sun, and as terrible 
as an army with banners. 

Why ^would you appeal to this man 
when your honor and life are imperilled 
and would not think of asking his advice 
in a mere matter of dollars and cents? 
Because, of course, because, the most un- 

59 



answerable of all retorts — because he is a 
criminal lawyer. Because the name is a 
synonym for the worst in all the world. 
Because it is associated with the lives and 
history of criminals, men and women who 
have committed every specie of crime and 
unredeemed by a single virtue. Because 
his life work, his every thought is along 
the line of devious ways, of hidden 
crimes, ghastly secrets; the keeper of lies, 
the bosom companion of murderous 
thoughts. 

In that quaint little village in Europe 
where the crucifixion of the Savior of the 
World is acted, the man who takes the 
role of Judas, even as it is played — is 
ostracized by his fellows. 

But, the criminal lawyer whose pro- 
fession it is to cheat justice, whose life is 
a study to release criminals that crime 
may go unwhipped, is the Sir Oracle in 
the criminal court room, the observed of 
all observers, the hero worshipped by 
law-breakers, the champion of human 
liberty and life. The God of the Criminal. 

60 



He is worse ! He's the friend and ad- 
vocate of the Trust, the representative of 
the captains of industry, the bosom com- 
panion of the boss in politics, the makers 
of Governers; the director of the machine 
behind political conventions; the consult- 
ing engineer of grafters; the king pin of 
all evil; the beloved of whosoever maketh 
and loveth a lie. 

When the miserable wretch who had 
robbed the world of the life of the 
lamented McKinley was brought before 
the criminal court in the city of Buffalo, 
the bar of that city paid itself a graceful 
compliment as pure as the life of the dead 
President and as exalted as the stars. 

No lawyer would accept the infamy 
of defending such a crime or representing 
so damnable a wretch. The bar of Buf- 
falo selected the foremost member of the 
profession to stand for the majesty of the 
people to see that a conviction was reached 
in due form of law. 

All honor to the decency of the Buffalo 
bar. All honor to the shining star of 



hope that gleams on; a promise that a 
crisis can arise when public sentiment 
and professional probity and honor will 
not lend their names or stand as the legal- 
ized representatives of crime and crimi- 
nals. 

From the pre-eminence of infamy upon 
which this carion kite has gibbeted him- 
self, his apologists will find it no easy 
task to take him down. 



62 



The Jurisdiction in Divorce 
Cases 



JURISDICTION IN THE 



DIVORCE TRIALS EZI 



^f T is a cardinal principle in law that 
ill no man shall be allowed to take 
advantage of his own wrong. Much 
more then he should not be allowed to 
take advantage of his own wrong that 
inflicts punishment upon the weak and 
helpless. The wrong that invades the 
home is a crime against humanity- 
Marriage is a status. It is more than 
a contract between one man and one 
woman. It is a union by and with the 
consent of the state. It is trammeled up 
with far-reaching consequences. "First 
to the father who engenders, then to the 
mother who gives birth, then to the 
master who rears, then to the city that 
civilizes, then to the country which is the 
mother supreme, then to humanity who is 
the great ancestor". And finally to God. 

65 



Neither party to thi3 contract should 
be allowed absolutions from this compact 
with the state so long as he or she has a 
duty left unperformed. Because every 
violation of this contract effects both the 
public policy of the state and endangers 
good morals. 

Any wrong by either party which 
justifies the other in seeking a dissolution 
of the marital relation is a crime per se 
and should be made so by statute. The 
court in which such a case is tried should 
be one sitting as a criminal court. The 
proceedings should be instituted by the 
pmblic prosecutor and the defense con- 
ducted by the public's defending attorney. 

The defendant should be compelled 
to be in open court at time of trial if pos- 
sible to be apprehended, and if he or she 
has fled the jurisdiction of the court, no 
dissolution should be made that would 
annul the marriage bonds in so far as they 
effect the offending party. 

The law should be a shield and sword 
for the protection and defense of inno- 

66 



cense and an avenger of the wrongs done 
by the guilty. This would wipe out the 
stigma of the present procedure and prac- 
tice and prevent the wrongdoer from tak- 
ing advantage of his own wrong. 

Under the law as it exists any husband 
or wife who feels the marriage bonds a 
burden too grievous to be borne can by 
an act, which is ground for divorce, drive 
his or her yoke -fellow to seek a legal 
separation and profit by his or her own 
wrong. In no other instance will the law 
allow a party to do this. 

Either party to the marriage contract 
who wishes to be freed from its terms 
can by living a life of open adultery, or by 
any other act which is a ground for divorce, 
drive the partner into a divorce court 
without being called to answer for the 
wrongs. Husband and wife agreeing to 
separate practice collusion upon the court 
and obtain a divorce. These are the 
abominations of divorce procedure that 
can easily be cured by making the trial a 
criminal one. 

67 



The fact that so much has been said 
and eo little done, is evidence of gross 
and dense ignorance on the part of the 
law- making power or the public does not 
demand a remedy and is content to allow 
crime to go unpunished and sin unrebuked 
in the home. 

It has been proven time and again by 
judges who have a high standard of morals 
and a desire to protect the home and the 
state that the law as lax as it is, when 
rigidly enforced, has put a stop to the 
divorce pestilence and put the divorce 
lawyer out of a job. 

We go mad over opinions thinking we 
are dealing with facts, but we do not stop 
to think the insane ravings of the multi- 
tude are merely opinions and that senti- 
ments held purposeless produce no 
changes. We are inclined to cling to an 
old make- shift because it is old for men 
have faith in wrinkles. 

The foolishest of all foolishness is this 
sickening rot about "aroused public senti- 
ment" on social evils that ends with being 

68 



aroused. As if tomorrow will be good 
because today was not. 

The mere having of an opinion or re- 
jecting it is not proof of an existing fact. 
The majority may be wrong, while a 
Galileo may be right. The world may 
laugh at a Copernicus and be in the wrong. 

On the other hand it is not always 
safe to argue that the minority i3 in the 
right, because it has the courage of its 
convictions. 

The champion of minorities grew 
eloquent as he shouted: "Christ was in 
the minority and who was right? The 
twelve apostles were in the minority and 
who was right" ? He paused for a reply 
and a wag in the audience said: "Judas 
Iscariot was in the minority and who was 
right"? 

Yes, Judas was in the minority and so 
are the criminal lawyers, the bosses in 
politics, the captains of industries and 
manipulators of the machines. 

It is not what we dream, but what we 
dare. Mere opinions and sentiments do 

69 



not change conditions. Numerical 
strenth cuts no figure when we consider 
a moral or religious question or one that 
makes for home and virtue. 

Forty per cent, of all the people in the 
world holding religious opinions know 
they are right. Twelve per cent, know 
all the others will be damned. Eight per 
cent, know all others are steeped in sin 
and iniquity and know not the Lord. Yet 
this sixty per cent, of the total religious 
world can not change the two per cent, of 
Jews or pry out of the Hebrew mind that 
God has a chosen people and they are it. 

It must be plain, that formation or 
reformation is not a matter of opinion or 
sentiment. The writing of glittering 
generalities in party platforms may be a 
declaration of party principles; laws may 
be dead letters on our statute books. 
The way to uproot an evil is to destroy it 
root and branch. 

An ounce of dread certainty, that pun- 
ishment will follow crime, is worth a ton 
of doubtful dynamite that is sure never 



to explode when the guilty are put on trial. 
So long as the hand writing on the 
wall is read to mean a superb menu, a fee 
to tickle the jp arson, a divorce trial before 
the curtain is rung down, there will be 
no reform in divorce trials. 



Graft, Passes and Rebates 



GRAFT, PASSES AND 
i I REBATES i l 

^■THE Attorney General of the United 
L9( States took the trouble the other 
day to go over to Oyster Bay and 
tell the President — so the newspapers say 
— that the laws are so obsolete relating to 
the punishment of criminals or any crimes 
or crookedness on the part of govern- 
mental department employes that there is 
no hope of conviction or punishing a clerk 
or under officer for any leak on Cotton 
Crop reports. 

The Attorney General suggests that 
the President tell congress about it in his 
next message and have the law makers 
look into the matter. In the language of 
the street gamin, "would'nt that jar you" ? 

Is anybody verdent enough or callow 
enough to think for one wild moment that 
any member of either house is going to 

75 



give up the game of politics and his 
especial graft long enough to frame a 
statute to punish a grafter in one of the 
departments ? 

Such twaddle sounds like the funny 
man, Mrs. Partington, talking to her son 
Ike. Mister Voter ! Mister American 
Citizen! and his Sons, who are the sole 
heirs of sovereign powers, has it ever oc- 
cured to you that some things must be hit 
with an axe? 

Laying the axe at the roots of the tree 
of evil in no way retards the growth of a 
single twig. Digging about the roots of 
this deadly Upas tree of graft for grubs 
increases its growth and prepares the soil 
for a wider spread of its branches. Deeper 
down in the soil of sin is the tap-root of 
this deadly night shade. 

The graft of underlings and clerks is 
not a tendril of the great roots of graft 
that like a cancer around the nerves are 
sapping the vital energy of this govern- 
ment. Higher and deeper are grafters 
who must be held to strict account before 

76 



email grafting can be made a crime, and 
punishment made an example that will 
check the growth of robbing and stealing 
by petty theives. 

The moral obliquity and political 
turpitude of Senators, Representatives, 
Governors, Judges and all Public Officials 
who accept grafts from public service 
corporations must be stopped before the 
devil can consistently rebuke sin. 

Suppose an officer empowered to go 
forth throughout the length and breadth of 
the land, with the all powerful and mighty 
mace of the republic, should say to all the 
grafters who hold passes: u Stand and 
deliver". The pile of graft would be 
bigger and higher than all the national 
public buildings thrown into one and the 
Washington monument on the top of the 
heap. 

Even if all the sheriffs of the land had 
orders to go through the pockets of all 
the judges and extract all the passes the 
pile of graft would be bigger and higher 
than any temple wherein justice is done. 

77 



O ye, of the judicial erinrine. Wash your 
dirty linen at home before you say? u 
ye generation of vipers who hath warned 
you to flee from the wrath to come'' 1 . 

If it is thought a thing incredible 
with God to raise one from the dead much 
more is it impossible to garnish the prison 
walls and floors and say to malefactors 
and theives, be ye clean, when the judicial 
erimine is draggled in the slimy ooze of 
graft. 

It may not be true that if this graft is 
not cut off judicial erimine will be a sail 
that has passed in the night but it will be 
true that judicial erimine will not be 
worth wearing. If it is not true 
that justice is dead it is true that 
justice is undone. Instead of trying to 
crush the wee, little mouse in the corner 
with a cannon ball, hit the big grafter 
who stands in the open, with an axe. 

There are judges you have seen who 
are no better than the slimiest criminal 
]awyer who wriggles in the festering cess- 
pools of rottenness and crime beneath 



him, and no judge can grace the bench 
who holds the balance of justice in one 
hand while with the other he grips the 
bribe of one of the litigants before him. 

No use to make laws to punish the 
petty grafter in the prisoner's box while 
a wiser and meaner grafter sits in judg- 
ment. 

Out with the entire brood. Hit the 
whole bunch, judge, law-maker and law- 
breaker with an axe. Oleanout the 
stables before you begin to worry over 
the sneak thief who threatens to steal the 
dung fork. 

But where is the axe? Yes, by all 
means let us have the axe. Here it is. 
Make it a penitentiary offense — five years, 
and a fine equal to one year's salary of 
any national, state or county or municipal 
office holder who is convicted of accepting 
or using a pass before or after election. 
How will you find out a pass has been 
issued? Compel every corporation issue- 
ing passes to file a sworn statement with 
the Secretary of State, in every state and 

79 



territory, in which they operate including 
a statement filed with the Recorder of 
Deeds of the District of Columbia; giving 
the number of each pass and name of the 
person to whom issued under a fine of 
$100,000.00 and ten years time in the 
penitentiary for each of the President, 
Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer, 
and Board of Directors of the corporation 
issuing passes. 



80 



The Machine and Boss- 
Made Judges 



THE MACHINE AND BOSS- 



I I MADE JUDGES 



^J|T has been said by some who know 
JJJ and by others who don't know much 
about our form of government that 
our system of selecting judges is all wrong 
and our judiciary rotten to the core. 

If selecting judges by a majority vote 
of the people is bad, then a machine and 
boss -made judge is infinitely worse. 

A few examples of boss- made judges 
might be of interest. Judge Sot had 
served one term of five years as common 
pleas judge. A convention was called 
to nominate his successor. He stood for 
a second term. The local boss said "JVb". 
His friend in the state machine said " Yes". 
The delegates had nothing to do with it. 

The boss had a state printer in a fat 
place. The judges friends said Judge 
Sot must be given a second term or the 

83 



state printer must go. The boss could 
not retain his friend in the state machine 
and oust the judge, therefore, he had to 
submit to the master or his friend's head 
must come off. 

The delegates must not know the boss 
was opposed to Judge Sot, therefore, the 
boss must put his name before the con- 
vention. The boss took his medicine. 

A short time before the date fixed for 
the convention Judge Sot had delivered 
an opinion in a case restraining strikers 
from picketing a corporation's plant and 
decided in favor of the corporation. The 
time for naming Judge Sot's successor 
arrived. The boss arose. He said: 
"Mr. Chairman, I have talked with a 
good many business men in this judicial 
district who have large interests at 6take. 
Business men who have read the opinion 
in the case of capital vs. labor are in 
favor of Judge Sot's renomination. 

I think it wise to respect their wishes: 
for my part, I think the man who seeks 
the high honor of a j udicial position 

84 



should at least be a man of good moral 
character. I nominate the Honorable P. 
D. D. Sot as a candidate to succeed him- 
self' 7 . 

The motion was seconded. There 
were no other nominations. Judge Sot 
was renominated. 

Like all other drunkards Judge Sot 
had been drowning his troubles for a 
week prior to the date of the convention 
in a hilarious debauch. He was sick, too 
sick to leave his hotel and go to the con- 
vention hall and thank the convention for 
the honor of renomination. 

*He is now on the bench when he is 
not at the bar. To the bench and the bar 
he is known as a drunkard. He has fre- 
quently been seen drunk in the court 
house, on the streets, hotels, and saloons. 
You can look higher and find his boon 
companions on the bench of reviewing 
courts. 

As an example of surprising ignorance 
the writer had an experience with two 

*Dead now — whisky. 

85 



ex- judges of the court of last resort in a 
state which has furnished Chief Justices 
in the Supreme Court of the United 
States — an experience he has never for- 
gotten. The ex-judges were the product 
of the machine when the machine had at 
least the semblance of respectability. 
After their retirement from the bench of 
the supreme court one of them was the 
President and the other the Treasurer 
and Attorney of an accident and sick 
benefit company engaged in insuring 
applicants against loss of time from acci- 
dent or sickness. 

They prepared and had the applica- 
tions for insurance printed and made the 
application the basis of the contract with 
the insured. They offered the applicant 
an indemnity against loss of time, paying 
from $3.00 to $40.00 a week upon paying 
a stipulated premium, but they did not 
require the applicant to state the money 
value of his time, which was the thing 
supposed to be insured against loss as the 
result of sickness or accident. 

86 



One of my clients held certificate No. 1 
in the company and asked for my opinion 
of the plan and safety of the organization. 
Upon giving him an unfavorable opinion 
he at once reported the same to the ex- 
judges. They were very indignant and 
at the next meeting of the board of 
trustees called the writer to book for an 
explanation . 

On entering their office I found the 
full board present and waiting for me to 
show cause why I should not be scalped 
for reflecting on the legal learning of the 
ex-judges of the Supreme Court. 

The Ex- Judge, president of the board, 
cleared his throat after the manner of 
judges about to say "Stand up", etc. 
Putting on his severest judicial frown he 
began by saying that they understood I 
had been making unfavorable comment 
on the company's application blanks and 
contracts and they looked upon my con- 
duct as a reflection on their knowledge of 
the law and would like an explanation 
and would give me an opportunity to 
state my reasons for my strictures. 

87 



I began by pointing out what I termed 
an oversight in not requiring the appli- 
cant to state the money value of his time; 
that by this omission the company had 
no knowledge of the thing to be protected. 
In other words, they had oversighted the 
moral hazard of the risk. His honor, the 
President, put on his judicial sarcastic 
smile and said "The what"? The moral 
hazard of the risk was the reply. "The 
moral hazard of the risk ! I never heard 
of such a thing and I don't think you, 
young man, know what you are talking 
about". "Very well, judge, this is no 
funeral of mine; I have not been asked to 
sit with the mourners, neither do I seek 
to be one of the pall-bearers, nor have I 
asked permission to furnish any flowers. 
Since you have decided that I do not know 
what I am talking about, you will not care 
to hear anything I may have to say." 

"Well," his honor remarked, and 
gave me a look which meant his judicial 
scalpel was keen and sharp and he was 

83 



prepared to teach me the difference be- 
tween skinning and being skinned. "Since 
you are here and have exposed your ignor- 
ance you may learn something if you have 
the capacity to receive learning and are 
not such an egregious ass as to suppose 
you know it all". In a patronizing way, 
"Suppose you tell us what you mean by 
your new fangled insurance phrase, the 
moral hazard of the risk". 

I was eating my humble pie as meekly 
as I could and I said: "Pardon me judge, 
but I did not know I was called in here 
to give kindergarten lessons to an A B 
C class in accident and sick benefit insur- 
ance, but since you call for a diagram of 
what you consider a joke, I'll do my best 
to give it to you. 

Let me illustrate it to you this way: 
Suppose you had a smoke-house in your 
back yard (the judge had been reared 
on a farm and knew the difference be- 
tween a smoke house and a church 
steeple) that had cost you $50.00 to build 
it and you wish a fire underwriter to in- 

89 



sure it against loss by fire, and you should 
apply for $10,000 of insurance and were 
willing to pay the premium on that 
amount." "Well I would not be fool 
enough to make such an application and 
no fire insurance company would assume 
such a risk". "Certainly not, judge, and 
why". "Because", said he! 'instead of 
assuming part of the risk myself which 
would be an inducement for me to take 
care of my property, the insurance com- 
pany would be offering me an inducement 
to burn it for the insurance I had paid 
for". By this time the judge's mind had 
travelled faster than the outline of the 
diagram and the point to the observation 
was in the application thereof. "In short", 
I said, "the company would refuse the 
application because the moral hazard of 
the risk had been oversighted. "Exactly". 
"Well then, judge" — "You need go no 
further", was his tart interruption. "But, 
your honor, I was not through." "We 
don't care to hear you any further", he 
snapped out". "Well", said I, "but some 

90 



of the others may be interested in an ex- 
planation and if you will permit me to go 
on they may permit me to put the saddle 
on 'the' egregrious ass's back, who, by 
right should wear it". "Go on", came 
from the other directors and when I was 
through the other ex- judge spoke out; He 
said: "Judge, it seems we don't know 
much about accident and sick benefit in- 
surance. I move that we employ Mr. H — 
to re -write our literature, applications and 
certificates, and that we burn up all the 
printed matter we now have on hand ; '. 
The motion was promptly seconded, put, 
and carried, and I did re-write their liter- 
ature, applications and certificates, which 
were afterwards approved and used by 
them and all the printed matter they had 
on hand was dumped into the furnace 
and burned. 

This incident proved to me that a 
lawyer might be a good politician and 
shrewd enough to get elected to sit on the 
bench in the court of last resort in a state 
and still be an incapable judge. 

91 



But what think you, Mr. Voter and 
Citizen, of the Boss-made Judge, and his 
name is legion, who has gone to the boss, 
paid the price for his nomination and 
election and when he draws his salary, 
does not so much as receive all that is due 
him, but leaves the boss 1 share in the 
hands of the treasurer? 

Do you want that judge — and God 
save the mark — to hold the scale between 
you and the boss 7 friend where you are a 
litigant ? 

Don't you think such a judge, if he 
happened to see his image in a glass, 
would instinctively say — "Stand up and 
receive your sentence" ? With one hand 
on his wallet and the other on his watch 
he would say to the man in the glass, 
"You have been tried before the bar of 
my concience, the virdict is guilty, the 
jury has been polled and it is a righteous 
verdict. The sentence of this court is 
that you be confined in the State Peni- 
tentiary for a term of five years at hard 
labor, no part of which time to be spent 

92 



in solitary confinement", and would at 
once deliver himself into the hands of the 
sheriff to execute the order. 

But why dive deeper into this cess-pool 
of political rottenness ? If the devouring 
fury of a public concience will not con» 
sume this iniquity we are undone. 



93 



The Iniquity of an 
Imported System 



THE INIQUITY OF AN IM- 
I I PORTED SYSTEM I I 

^tJtt'HILE justice is about to travel up 
ilj and down the wishbone of one of 
the three great racers among life 
insurance companies, yet retributive jus- 
tice does not seem to be a good enough 
roadster to overtake "the system" of "in- 
dustrial" insurance and mete out the just 
dues to those who grind the faces of the 
poor under the pretext of protection. 
"Industrial" grafters sail on an even keel 
through untroubled seas, undisturbed by 
the obscene tumult raging all around 
"the big three", because the wrocgs of 
"industrial" iniquity deal only with the 
"short and simple annals of the poor". 

The widow's mite that was big enough 
to attract the attention of the Savior of 
the world and immortalize a woman be- 
cause "she hath done what she could" is 

97 



too small a matter to concern loud 
mouthed "Trust Busters" and bloviated 
blatherskites who assume a virtue be- 
cause they have it not, and exploit the 
crimes of high finance thieves who are 
still meaner than the pals who peach. 

The dear public and millionaires who 
have been so cruelly robbed by "the sys- 
tem" can hardly be exp ected to take 
notice of the crimes and iniquities done 
by the "industrial" hordes who gather up 
the millions rubbed out of wash tubs; 
ironed out of garments sweat -stained and 
tear-stained; scraped out of gutters and 
back alleys; picked out of old rags; sewer 
trenches and mines; and pennies wrung 
from the hands of toiling millions of the 
poorest paid labor in the world, and 
damped into the insatiate maw of the 
industrial mill which grinds so slowly but 
grinds so exceedingly fine that its noise- 
less system is unexploited. 

No need of fig leaves to hide the 
wrong done the very poor. Their cries 
are heard only in heaven and by God 

9S 



alone. The agonizing cry of the lowly is 
never answered until their wrongs are a 
stench in the nostrils of an avenging God. 

The unrequited toil of 200 years that 
had been paid in the stripes of the mas- 
ter's lash were avenged by the sword. 
Every drop of blood drawn from the 
black man's back by the cruel lash, was 
repaid in tears and oceans of blood drawn 
from the white man's veins. 

It must be so again. Every tear- 
stained nickel taken from the widow un- 
der pretext of protecting her sick and 
starving child; every blood-stained penny, 
fallow- soaked with the blood and sweat 
of poorest paid toil, taken under the pre* 
text that the insured's body will thus be 
saved from the dissecting knife and not 
be buried in the potter's field, must be 
repaid by those who carry on the nefari- 
ous business of the ^industrial system". 

It i3 the purpose of this chapter to 
show how the 'industrial system" extracts 
millions in pennies and nickels from 
widows and orphans, takes bread out of 

99 



the mouth of babes in the cradle, and 
pennies from the aged and infirm until 
they are swallowed up in the grave under 
a pretext of protection, which, in point of 
fact, is only such protection as vultures 
offer lambs. 

It is but just to say, in passing, this 
"industrial system" is a foreign importa- 
tion. It is the work of the same devilish 
minds in which were evolved the grinding 
process of sweat shops, women workers 
in mines and toiling children in factories 
reeking with foul pestilence and noise- 
some smells and death dealing vapors. 

It is only just to American manhood, 
American sense of honor, justice and fair- 
ness and high ideals, which scorn the 
thought of robbing widows and infants, 
the aged and the infirm poor, to say that 
no true American citizen would have ever 
conceived the iniquity or worked out the 
detail of this hell-born system of petit 
larceny. 

It originated in England. It was 
worked out in all its fi e n d i s h n e s s by 
100 



Englishmen. It was introduced to the 
poor of this country by English agents 
with cockney airs and cockney insinuat- 
ing manners. Englishmen, with the dex- 
terity of the artful dodger and trained by 
men with the instincts of Fagin. 

Industrial insurance and Fagin are 
identical characters and ought to be im- 
mortalized together in everlasting infamy; 
a living monument of the most hateful 
graft because its victims are those who 
have no defenders and for whom the laws 
offer no protection. 

It is but just to say that this foreign 
importation was time tried. It was good 
because it was old. It was warranted to 
meet every emergency. It was guaranteed 
to fit the most destitute. It was English 
"you know". Like the Common Law, 
"the collected wisdom of the ages' 7 — with 
the brand blown in each bottle. 

It is the product of the slower -footed 

thought which prompted the making of 

the bull dog. By the way, the bull dog 

is not a specie of dog. He is the mean 

101 



counterfeit of something better. He is 
the ''made dog" of British stubbornness, 
savagery, ferociousness, — all head, mouth, 
teeth, and stomach, like "the made dollar" 
of "the system", meaner than a counter- 
feit of the real dollar. And the "indus- 
trial system" is an exact duplicate of its 
British brother, — all head, mouth, jaws, 
and an insatiable appetite of greed and 
grim determination to grab and graft and 
hold fast the last penny of the poor be- 
cause its jaws are set and it will die in 
the attempt to hang onto its victims. 

Its only claim to respectability and 
the only virtue for which it can be com 
mended is the one for which the old lady 
admired the devil — its indomitable per- 
severance. 

With these few forewords, the reader 
is invited to consider the up- shot, ground 
plan and superstructure of the industrial 
graft. 

Let us take up a policy of industrial 
insurance issued on a child, an adult, a 
babe in the cradle, on the aged whose 

102 



heads are frosted by time. Its all the 
same from the cradle to the grave. The 
application is made out, a doctor runs in 
and looks at the victim, called the in- 
sured. His fee, 25 cents. The agent 
who "writes the business", is paid fifteen 
times; that is, he gets as the first commis- 
sion for thi3 ten cent premium, $1.50, 
fifteen times ten cents. The victim pays 
this 10 cents. The doctor and agent get 
$1.75 and the agent gets 15 per cent, for 
collecting the 10 cents so long as the 
victim continues to pay. 

A policy "comes down" that is, is is- 
sued but it is not in force for its face for 
weeks* months, a year and a day. If the 
victim, — called the insured, dies before 
the policy is in full force for its face, only 
a small part is paid. 

The graft is set; if the victim "is in 
arrears", that is, fails to pay for four con- 
secutive weeks, the policy is "lapsed" 
lost. If the arrears are paid up, the 
agent goes on and collects 10 cents a 
week until it does {i lapse" or becomes "a 

103 



claim" by death, which rarely happens. 

It makes no difference what these in- 
dustrial companies may say or how much 
proof they may offer, and how many 
death claims they can show have been 
paid; the appalling fact still remains, the 
combined number of industrial policies 
issued by all the companies in America 
since the system was brought to this 
country, would supply one-ha f of the 
80,000,000 people each with a policy. 

And the further fact still remains that 
all these companies do not have in actual 
force 5,000,000 policies on which the in- 
sured would have a death claim if the 
holders should all die tomorrow. They 
have millions of policies on which they 
are collecting weekly payments that never 
have and never will cost them a single 
penny, and they know it. 

If you are not "wise" on this system 
of graft you ask: "How can the company 
pay the Doctor 25 cents and the Agent 
$1.50 and 15 per cent, of the 10 cents as 
soon as the policy issues ? It does look 

104 



preposterous that for eight and one -half 
cents actually paid in to the company it 
could pay out $1.76^, does it not. The 
answer to this question is like the answer 
to the question where Jim Bludso lives. 
"Wall, he don't live, you see, leastwise 
he's out of the fashion of livin, like you 
and me". The Company does not pay it 
you see, leastwise, it is not in the habit 
of paying like you and me. Who does? 
The victim insured, of course. But how 
can the victim pay it ? 

If he pays seventeen weeks he pays 
but $1.70. The agent would get 25£ 
cents of that. Add to this the doctor's 
fee of 25 cents and there is but $1.19J left. 
The company is still shy 57i cents at the 
end of seventeen weeks. It will take 
nearly seven weeks more to make up this 
57^ cents. Twenty-four weeks, or $2.40 
to pay the initial cost of this 10 cent 
policy. 

Impossible, you say. But wait. The 
bull dog has secured his death grip on 
the insured's throat. His teeth are set 

105 



and his jaws are locked like a vice. But 
this is not all. The agent is in the toils 
as well. Suppose the victim breaks loose 
and the bull dog loses his grip on the 
victim's throat when $2.40 has been paid 
in. The dog flies at the throat of the 
agent. The agent must get another 
victim and the bull dog lets go his hold 
on the agent and fastens on the throat 
of the new victim. 

Now what? The doctor gets 25 cents 
but the agent gets the bull dog in his 
neck — he gets nothing. If this initial 
policy lapses a million times the agent 
gets but one whack at the graft. This 
$1 50 is all he will ever get out of this 
victim until some one holds the policy- 
long enough to die — that ends it. 

As a matter of fact, then the "fifteen 
times" that is, the payment of fifteen 
times the face of the weekly payment has 
never been paid on any policy except those 
that lapse by death. You begin to see 
where the graft comes in, don't you ? 

If the combined number of policies 

106 



issued by all these companies is 40,000,000, 
and they have paid 5,000,000 death claims, 
then the companies have paid this "fifteen 
times" only on one in every eight policies 
issued. 

You say, "but I don't quite under- 
stand this yet. If the company has paid 
eight times 25 cents for eight examina- 
tions, that is $2.00, plus $1.50, makes 
$3.50 paid out and 80 cents minus 12 
cents for agents commissions, leaves but 
72 cents for the $3.50. The company 
has lost $2.78". Oh, no, the victims must 
make up that $2.78. 

Now it must be plain to a school boy 
that if eight people have paid out 80 cents 
at a cost of $3.50, some one or all the 
eight must make up this difference before 
a single one of these policy-holders can 
get any money out of a death loss. But 
this is not all, this 10 cents a week must 
pay its share of the assistant superinten- 
dent's weekly salary which is paid to him 
in cash each week, ranging from $18.00 
to $24.00. Superintendent from $50.00 

107 



to $200.00 a week, on up to president 
who gets $1,921.00 per week, besides what 
is paid to the army of clerks, field inspec- 
tors, etc. So it is plain this 10 cents will 
be eaten up and there will be nothing left 
with which to pay this $3.50. 

The fact is, a 10 cent policy will yield 
but $5.20 per year of fifty-two weeks, 
and it is loaded with an initial expense of 
$3.50 if seven out of eight policies lapse 
within a year. 

Mr. Eeader ! You may think the 
foregoing is a Chinese puzzle and not a 
plain statement of the facts and you do 
not understand how it can be true. No, 
and you never will understand industrial 
graft until you have been victimized by it. 

It is a fact that assistant superinten- 
dents are employed — selected out of the 
agency force — and paid a weekly salary 
ranging from $18.00 to $24.00 a week for 
no other purpose than to drill and teach 
agents the mysteries of the system. And 
few agents ever get beyond the A. B. 0. 
of the system. 

108 



No man, no matter how learned or 
versed in business or any of the profes- 
sions, can take up this system and master 
its details inside of three months of labor- 
ious work. You need not be at all sur- 
prised if this foregoing statement is a 
maze to you. 

Out of the 40,000,000 policies issued, 
we say 5,000,000 are in force and 30,000,- 
000 have lapsed. In insurance parlance 
this is true, but in point of fact it is not 
true, for the simple reason these so-called 
lapsed policies have never been in force 
and have been used by the system as 
men of straw to prevent the agent from 
getting his "fifteen times" for writing the 
business. Yet, while the agent has not 
been paid his "fifteen times" he has been 
collecting 10 cents a week while the 
policy has been in the names of one set 
of victim and then passed to others who 
take up the policy where another has 
failed to keep up the weekly pay. This 
is the system's main source of graft, but 
by no means its only one. 

109 



There are two classes of industrial 
insured, which furnish the bulk of death 
claims, the infants and very old. While 
both infant and aged pay the same pre- 
miums ashealthyadults the amount 
insured on the infants and aged is a nom- 
inal nothing. 

It is not necessary to consult the 
"dream book" of the actuary to under- 
stand this fact. The death rate is greatest 
among the very young and very old. At 
the beginning and end of the insurable 
period, between one and three years, and 
sixty- seven and seventy years, the death 
rate is higher than at any other period. 
That is, if you take 100,000 infants, 100,- 
000 adults and 100,000 at the age of 
seventy, the very young and the very old 
furnish the greatest number of deaths and 
the smallest amount of loss. While the 
insured who carry the policy from infancy 
to expectancy have paid treble the face of 
the policy when it becomes a claim by 
death ; and the great number who fall out 
and their policies are revived by others 
no 



who continue to pay but never die while 
the policy is in their names, are never a 
risk and never get protection or a penny 
returned. 

All of the states granting charters to 
life insurance companies, excepting the 
industrial system — compel the companies 
to either give extended insurance for pre- 
miums paid after a fixed period of years, 
or give a surrender value in cash or paid- 
up insurance payable at death if a policy 
lapses or is surrendered. 

The industrial grafters exercise their 
own sweet will in this matter and cut the 
insured off at the end of four weeks and 
declare a policy forfeited no matter how 
much has been paid or how long the in- 
sured has kept up his weekly payment. 

As a matter of fact, these companies 
are now holding out inducements to have 
their victims keep up their paltry insur- 
ance and offer extended insurance and 
paid-up values and cash values, but on 
investigation it will be found that the in- 
sured has paid a larger sum than the face 



of the policy and cost of carrying the risk. 
In any case, the victim has been fleeced 
most outrageously. 

How any decent American business 
man can accept blood money obtained in 
this way is a marvel to any one who 
knows the ins and outs of this system. 

Think of it! The man who went to 
England and imported this graft now 
holds the position as president of this 
company with a salary said to be $100,- 
000.00 per year. That is 1,921.00 per 
week. He is also a United States senator 
— What for? For the same reason mil- 
lionaire rail-road magnates go to the 
senate — to watch over their interests and 
see that no laws are passed that will effect 
their so-called properties. 

A United States senator looks into 
the face of the Vice-President o f the 
United States as he presides over the 
most august body in the world, while an 
army of 75,000 starving children is being 
deprived of 75,000 pints of milk every 
week in the year to pay this man's salary 

112 



of $1,921.00 a week, and not one penny 
will ever be returned to these infants or 
their poor, deluded mothers who are de- 
priving their children of the necessaries 
of life for petit larceny insurance that 
does not insure. The tear-stained nickels 
are swallowed up to keep up the graft 
and feed the octopus. 

A poor factory girl who pays 10 cents 
a week for this petit larceny graft devotes 
more than twelve years of her life to pay 
this man's salary for a single week and if 
in that time she is sick or unable to pay 
10 cents a week for four consecutive 
weeks, her twelve years of wages are 
swept away at one fell swoop and her 
petit larceny protection is lost! 

An official of this graft smokes a $1.00 
cigar, which represents twenty nickels 
rubbed out of a wash tub by some poor, 
deluded widow who thinks she is laying 
it up against a day of death. If her 
babe, which she deprives of a pint of 
milk each week to pay this petit larceny 
steal, sickens and she cannot pay for four 



weeks, all is lost. She denies herself and 
child the necessaries of life to keep up 
this graft with the fond hope that if it 
dies she will have a sufficient sum to take 
it out and lay it away, where, at the call 
of the south winds, flowers may come 
up all over its grave, a sweet prophecy of 
a resurrection. 

Death overtakes the little one, but 
during its illness the mother has not paid 
the nickel a week for four weeks and the 
policy has lapsed! Her money went up 
in a night at a "smoker" where jolly 
grafters chuckled over the increase of 
"business". The babe found a resting 
place in the potters field. 

Shame on this outrage infinite. Mr. 
Reader! I tell you no flowers of comfort 
will ever grow on the barren heath of a 
grafters sepulcher. 

But why enlarge on this iniquity ? It 
is certainly known to all the commission- 
ers of insurance in all the states where 
these companies work the poor. 

Suffice it to say of all the graft, greed 

114 



and stealing going on in the United States 
today, there is no system of robbery half 
so mean, half so wicked, half so con- 
temptible. It is petit larceny on a gigan- 
tic scale. It is a system of theft, taking 
from the poorest paid labor the hardest 
earned money. And, meaner still, it is 
taken with full knowledge on the part of 
the officials, directors and stock holders, 
that not one dollar in ten will ever be 
returned to the insured. 

If the richest man on this continent 
takes sore trouble for his greed, he may 
still congratulate himself when he com- 
pares his system with the industrial graft. 
In comparison he is an angel and a saint 
when mentioned with this horde of petit 
larceny grafters. 

If there ever is an aroused public on 
this subject there will go up such a 
mighty shout of indignation, such a cry 
for vengeance, such an appeal that God 
Almighty may consume this iniquity in 
the brightness of His coming that it will 
be wiped off the face of the earth. There 
is no other way to deal with it, it should 
be annihilated. 

115 



The Author was concious that what 
had been written concerning the iniquity of 
an imported system might seem to the 
reader, not familiar with industrial insur- 
ance, as the insane raving of a diseased 
imagination rather than the sober judgment 
of a candid mind supported by sufficient 
proof to warrant the writing of it down. 
While the foregoing chapter was in press 
Mr. Haley Fiske, Vice-President o f t h e 
Metropolitan Life testified before the New 
York Life Insurance Investigating Com- 
mittee and more than verified every state- 
ment which had been made above. The 
charges are therefore not the vain vaporings 
of a diseased and distorted imagination, but 
ghastly facts bearing upon their face the 
import of absolute verity supported by the 
sworn testimony of a competent and credi- 
ble witness willingly making declarations 
against his own interests. Mr. Fiske makes 
the following admissions: His company had 
11,000 agents at the beginning of the year 
1900, the same number at the end of that 
year and 16,000 agents left the company in 
the same year, making 27,000 agents in the 
company's employ in 1900. He admits that 
575,392 policies lapsed in that year, at a loss 
$1,070,000.00, which loss was paid by the 
persistent policy-holders. He says the cost 
of putting a new policy on the company's 
books is $2.07, which is paid by the persis- 
tent payers. He admits that each policy 
lapsed costs the persistent policy-holders 
$1.86. He admits that there was paid, on 
116 



an average, 72 cents on each, lapsed policy, 
for the time it was in force averaging from 
10 to 12 weeks each. He says the people 
are bound to have this insurance and the 
salaries paid officials do not amount to 
much. We shall see if the facts support the 
allegations. From these sworn statements 
and admissions the following deductions 
must be accepted as equivalent to proof 
verified upon oath. 

The company's business for the 15 years 
last past, will show that 1900 was an aver- 
age year's business for each year covered 
by that period. If 575,392 policies lapsed in 
1900, this company has lapsed in the 15 
years last past 7,500,000 policies, at a cost 
of $2.07 for each policy put on the books, or 
a total loss to policy holders of $15,000,000.00. 
If an average of 72 cents has been paid on 
each lapsed policy the loss to those who 
have lapsed their policies in the 15 years 
last past has been $5,400,000.00. As the 
persistent policy holders have paid all the 
lossses on these lapsed policies they have 
been robbed out of $20,400,000.00 in the 15 
years last past on lapsed policies alone. 
The average weekly premium on these 
lapsed policies is 10 cents, the agency force 
has lost $1.50 on each of the 7,500,000 poli- 
cies or $11,250,000.00. Addtothisthe 
persistent policy holder's losses on lapsed 
policies for 15 years and the combine loss 
to agents and policy-holders on lapsed poli- 
cies alone reaches the gigantic sum of 
$31,650,000.00. Since the company gains 

117 



what the agents and persistent policy-hold- 
ers lose the stockholders have in 15 years 
netted $31,650,000.00 on lapses alone. This 
may explain why 16,000 agents desert the 
company in one year and 500,000 victims 
throw down their policies annually. The 
agency force consist of three classes. One 
coming, one going, and one working. 16,000 
coming and going and 11,000 at work. To 
train and keep this army of 27,000 men at 
work requires at least 1,350 assistant super- 
intendents at a cost of $27,000.00 a week or 
$1,404,000.00 annually. It costs half that sum 
for "Supers", to direct the assistants; so 
that the persistent policy holders pay more 
than $2,000,000.00 annully to support this 
army of 27,000 agents and officers. In 15 
years the very, very poor have paid $30,000,- 
000.00 more to be added to the other $31,650,- 
000.00 or a total of more than $60,000,000.00, 
for which they will never, never see a dollar 
in return. This is what Mr. Fiske says they 
"are bound to have" or take "insecure" in- 
vestments. Deduct 15 per cent, from the 
entire amount paid by all policy-holders for 
the support of the agency force and you will 
see how much truth there is in Mr. Fiske's 
statement that the salaries don't amount to 
much. Out of every million gathered up in 
nickels and dimes, $150,000.00 is retained by 
the agency force. 

Mr. Fiske's sworn statements are proof 
positive that petit larceny insurance is the 
most gigantic swindle ever perpetrated on 
the very, very poor of the American people. 

118 



He says they are bound to have it. A great 
lie. 27,000 agents daily whipped into line 
can't force the weekly premiums out of 
500,000 victims for a longer period than 10 
to 12 weeks, as that number lapse annually. 
Make it a crime for an agent to solicit an 
application or collect a premium and there 
will not be an industrial policy in force five 
years hence, and Mr. Fiske knows it. 



119 



Frazzled Frenzy 



FRAZZLED FRENZY 



M 



rR. READEK ! All this talk about 
putting "the system" out of 
action, all this writing up of 
trusts, all this bloviated bluster and 
blather about exposing graft, steal, and 
high crime in corporation mergers is but 
insane raving. 

Paper pellets pelting plutocracy may 
be fine writing. Fine writing may amuse 
the multitude. It can only make the 
judicious grieve. It is but a windy supi- 
ration of forced breath. It may split the 
very ears of the groundlings. It may tear 
a passion to tatters, very rags, but it is 
only dumb show and noise. 

Who will it benefit ? Why the writers 
and publishers. Who will it punish? 
Those who fool away their time in reading 
and talking about it. 

A few facts, cold naked facts, will at 

123 



once show "the public" is not in high 
finance foolishness. 

"The lambs" shorn of their silly 
fleeches are not "the public" any more 
than a handful of gamblers in a low down 
resort are the population of a city of 
100,000 people. This silly gush and rot 
about stock robbery and "the public", 
this crimination and recrimination of 
gamblers concerns no one but the gamb- 
ling few. If they were fenced off in a 
pen by themselves, they would be found 
— not so many. 

At best this exploiting of the crimes 
of high finance would be considered a 
blanc mange pudding if taken up as the 
statement of a cause of action in a civil 
pleading before any respectable court. 
There is not a head, a bone, or a vital 
organ in the entire mass of words. 

It would squeeze through the fingers 
of legal hands like a ball of mush. It 

124 



would ooze out of a cheese cloth bag like 
skimmed milk, after it has soured. 
State the case thus: 

In the Court of Nowhere. 

Before Judge Nobody, in the State of Frenzy. 

Windy Tom, the squealer, \ 

The Pal who peached— Pltff. / 

vs ( Petition 

} for 

Crafty Hank and Silent John, ( R 

The still swine who have the swill. J 
—Defts. / 

Here follows the wind pudding in 
passionate pleading until Windy Tom's 
villianous part in the deal smiles like a 
May Queen. 

Signed by the champion wind 
jammer of the ages. 

Counsel pro se. 

Place this war of words in the hands 
of a lawyer. He does not read it. Hands 
it over to his typewriter girl with the 
single word "Demurrer". 

She knows what to do. Entitles the 
case and names the court, followed by the 
word Demurrer. "Come now the defts. 

125 



and demur to the petition in the above 
entitled cause for that it does not state 
facts sufficient to constitute a cause of 
action". 

When the famous case is down for a 
hearing, the public cranes its neck to see 
and hear whatis to be done in the 
' Tichborne claimant" case. 

The court looks wise and says; "The 
plaintiff pleads for God's sake" — but the 
demurrer must be sustained. Case dis- 
missed at pltffs. costs and execution 
awarded". That's the end of it. 

But we said a few stark naked facts 
would show "the public" was not con- 
cerned in high finance theiving. Well 
here they are. — 

The Census of 1900 showed 15,964,000 
families in the United States. Five per- 
sons on an average to each family gives 
a total of 75,994,575 people. Fifty-one 
per cent, of these live in the country, 
eleven per cent, semi- urban, and thirty- 
eight per cent, in cities and towns. What 
about their income? Nearly thirty-three 

126 



per cent, of all these families have an 
average annual income of $400,00; $80.00 
to each member of these families. A 
whole lot, is it not? Twenty -one per 
cent, have an annual income of $400.00 
to $600.00; fifteen per cent, have from 
$600.00 to $900 00; ten per cent, have 
from $900.00 to $1,200.00; less than eight 
per cent, have from $1,800.00 to $3,000.00 
and only five per cent, have an annual 
income of over $3,000.00! 

Blessed are the poor, for they shall 
not be robbed, does not apply when the 
poor get into the hands of trusts and in- 
dustrial insurance companies; but the 
poor have been so thoroughly, wholly, 
entirely and completely done for by those 
who control food and insurance supplies 
that they have nothing left with which to 
buck the Wall Street Tigers. 

High finance thieves shear lambs who 
have some wool on them. It is the trusts 
and industrial insurance grafters who do 
the skinning where no wool can be 
clipped. 

127 



It is easy to see what the men who 
have no money could do if the thieves 
who have it could not corrupt them. 

It's up to this great Nation to say, 
shall men or money count? Shall money 
grind men down until we have revolution 
and b 1 o o d or will men teach money a 
lesson and the making of men count for 
more than the making of dollars. 

See if your tig leaf is on straight and 
then answer the questions. 



128 



The Hog in Sunday School 



THE HOG IN SUNDAY 



II SCHOOL C 



"/gt^NCE upon a time" the earth was 
I J J "stale, flat and unprofitable". 
The sun rose in the East and set 
in the West. Wise men told their children 
the story of Joshua commanding the sun 
to stand still and believed it to be liter- 
ally true. Ghosts walked at night. 
Strong men trembled at sight of their 
shadows. 

An obscure man said the world was 
round and that he could sail away, go 
round the world, and return to the point 
of starting. The knowing ones laughed 
him to scorn. 

After much dissapointment and delay, 
a woman's jewels placed in pawn liber- 
ated the idea and a day was long enough 
to find a World. 

This man was so glad when he found 

131 



a new world that lie landed on his knees 
and gave thanks that he had found a new 
people to whom the gospel might be 
preached and new nations might come to 
know God. 

In time others came to this new world 
and landed on their knees, and, as a great 
lawyer once said, "then landed on the 
aboriginees". 

Thus it came to pass that landing on 
the knees was but the first move to land 
upon all things in the new world. It 
became a part of the white man's creed 
and is still in vogue. 

Great ideas seldom travel alone. They 
go by twos. Discovery and grab are 
beasts of prey, whelped in the same lair 
and suckled by the same she-wolf. 

Landing on the knees in Sunday 
School is a favorite method of concealing 
what has been "landed 1 ' in the nets of 
grab and graft during week days. The 
Sunday School stunt casts a potent spell 
over those who come under its influence. 
It is both a sword and a shield for high 
crime in politics and business. 

132 



Doing time in Sing Sing could not 
rob a political grafter of his saintly name 
in Sunday School. John Y. McKane was 
a perfect devil in politics and a meek and 
lowly follower of the Master on the 
Lords day. 

Men, hogs, and the devil have "been 
close friends and near neighbors, and 
have found convenient shelter under the 
same church portals. The devil in the 
hogs, has been a well worn theme in 
Sunday School and has been many times 
re -told to point a moral or adorn a tale. 

Little pilgrims robed in white in Sun- 
day Schools have been told how the 
devils were driven out of the man possessed 
of them; that the devils were suffered to 
enter into a drove of hogs and the hogs 
rushed into the sea and were chocked; 
but they were never told that the devils 
escaped and entered into other hogs now 
parading in Sunday garb. 

How the devils may be driven out of 
these hogs that still infest the Sunday 
Schools or drown them with the hogs, is 

133 



a much mooted question and the answer 
is not yet. 

The story of a particular one who has 
long paraded his holy unction in Sunday 
School, as herein set forth, may help to 
rob this hog of the glamour of his chris- 
tian charity, and pierce his armor of 
pious frauds, which has fooled the Sunday 
School devotees and even won praises 
from the elect who refuse to see the great 
criminal behind his make up of respecta- 
bility and devotion to the Sunday School, 

Calling a thing by its known, common 
name has often helped the learned and 
wise, as well as the plain people, to un- 
derstand an otherwise vexed question. 
This is the reason for telling the story of 
a hog in Sunday School in words so plain 
that he who runs may read. 

This hog can trace his blood lines 
back to the truly good who landed on 
their knees when they first came to this 
land of the free. A lineal descendant of 
those ancient scoundrels who first discov- 
ered, then grabbed the earth and the 

134 



fullness thereof. Zealous in good works 
and fiendish in their purposes to possess 
all there was in sight even to the exter- 
mination of rightful owners. This one 
had a good mother who taught him in all 
good work and to give his time to the 
Lord in Smnday School; to give unto the 
Lord on Sunday some portion of what he 
had taken from others during the week. 
He was not the "runt" of the litter, 
neither did he suck the "hind teat". He 
was thrifty from the start. The devils 
early marked him as their own for they 
saw he was by nature bent to "hog" the 
swill. The still pig that gets the swill 
six days in the week can well squeal over 
the empty trough on Sunday. The 
"Still Pig" grew to be a big hog by being 
still and respectable. 

You have heard it often in Sunday 
School, "the children of darkness are 
wiser in their generation than the children 
of light". This little pig had learned 
very early the truth of a very old saying, 
"root hog, or die". He said, "I must do 

135 



something to keep the others from root- 
ing". So he set about putting rings in 
the noses of all pigs in his employ that 
they could not root up anything between 
him and what he wanted. In this way 
the little pigs, as well as grown ones, 
could be safely worked by him but they 
dould not root for themselves. So long 
as they worked for what he saw fit to 
giye them they could live, but never grow 
fat. If they would not work and be con- 
tent to live the lean life, he turned them 
away. His ring in their noses would not 
allow them to root and they must surely 
die. He knew that hungry pigs would 
squeal when the trough was empty, 
therefore he gave on Sunday a scant por- 
tion of what he had filched from hungry 
jugs on week days. 

To give to the poor is to lend to the 
Lord, and the Lord's poor are always loud 
in their praise. The praise of the few 
who received muffled the din of the curses 
of those who had been robbed. The art 
of infamy is in keeping a quiet mein. 

136 



The gift to conceal is a license to steal. 
The Sunday School was the legalized 
'fence" that gave the devil in this hog 
the right to steal at will and hide in the 
open. 

"The Holy Supper is kept, indeed 
In what so we share with another's need; 
Not what we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare. 
Who gives himself with his alms, feeds three, 
Himself, his hungering- neighbor, and me." 

But the devil in this hog not only 
snatched the Holy Grail from the lips of 
the thirsty drinkers, but stole the little 
pig's portion from the hungry mothers 
because he was bound to have the hog's 
share— All. 

The greed of this one was from the 
deeps of a mighty maw. It was born in 
the abyss. The earth was the Lord's, 
and the fullness thereof, the cattle on a 
thousand hills were His; but the boiling 
caldrons in the bowels of the earth be- 
longed to this hog. The hidden purpose 
went well with the hidden treasure. The 
hog who found it had no right, the hog 

137 



who wanted it was bound to respect. No 
one must root the earth but him. No one 
must have a trough free from him. He 
must have the swill but he must not be 
known to fight. In Sunday School little 
pigs were taught their snouts and grow- 
ing tusks were not made to war and fighto 
"The still pig gets the swill". Little 
pigs must not squeal too loud ; so more 
swill is put in the Sunday School troughs. 
But there were other hogs of the same 
brood, others fierce and wild. Not the 
fat chubby faced pigs whose pictures one 
sees as prize winners at County Fairs, but 
real hogs, the razor-backed kind, wild of 
eye, stiff bristles, fierce tusks, with noses 
long enough to dig up nine rows of pota- 
toes shut in by a rail fence,and never 
touch a rail. 

This razor-back-breed had all the 
devil-may-care greed of the big one but 
they had not his Sunday School cunning; 
to keep still at the trough and get the 
swill while the blind pigs squealed be- 
cause they could not find the gruel. So 

138 



the big one took them in training, he 
taught them the trick of ham- stringing 
all others while they were struggling to 
get to the trough. You may not know 
what it means to ham- string a hog. This 
is a back-woods saying. It means to cut 
the large tendon in a hog's hind legs. 
This tendon is called the ham -string be- 
cause the backwoodsman, when he had 
killed a hog, hung it up by this tendon. 
When he smoked hams, this tendon was 
the string that held the ham and it was 
called a ham string. When this tendon 
is cut the hog can no longer walk or 
stand to get to the trough. 

Ham stringing other hogs was a better 
way to keep them from getting to the 
swill trough than putting out the eyes of 
little pigs. 

There was one kind of swill the big 
one greatly liked. He liked it all the 
more because it could only be had by 
those with no rings in their noses, that is, 
hogs who could root up the earth, dig 
deep, and get the swill from the ground. 

139 



It was particularly good as others wanted 
it for the light it gave them. 

The big one said to all the brood of 
razor -backed wild boars who roamed the 
earth in his trail, we niust get all this 
swill in onr troughs. We will put out 
the eyes of all those whose noses we can- 
not ring. We will ham- string all others 
who try to get this swill in their troughs. 
No one must root the earth for this swill 
unless we can get it into our troughs. 
You smaller hogs must gouge, bite, use 
your noses, rip with your fierce tusks, 
kill, starve, destroy all who come in your 
way, who try to get any of this swill un- 
less it goes through our troughs. The 
big one was wiser than all the generations 
of hogs before him. The value of this 
swill to us, he said, is not in the amount 
the other hogs use, but in our making 
them get it for us for nothing and paying 
us our price. It is working the ends 
against the middle that makes us fat and 
keeps them lean. You wild boars who do 
my bidding must do the "dirty work" 

140 



while I keep quiet. While you keep up 
this hell among the poor, I'll work the 
Sunday School and show how nice a hog 
I am by giving swill to the blind pigs. 

I am no philanthropic hog. No hog 
can be a philanthropist. The philanthro- 
pist gets a little from a great many hon- 
estly and finally gives away a great lot in 
a bunch to nobody. I take it all from all 
the hogs and give back a little to drown 
the squealing of the pigs and those I have 
robbed of all that is dear to life and 
necessary for living. If I give out a little 
today, I take enough more from all to- 
morrow to replace it. Hogs never give 
away their swill. 

Thus day by day this great one and 
hi3 herd of wild boars waxed sleeker and 
fatter while the blind pigs and ham strung 
hogs grew thinner and leaner. Yet the 
great one poured swill into the Sunday 
School trough, and to those who squealed 
loudest his praise, he gave an extra allow- 
ance, thereby he held his place in Sunday 
School and his praise went up all over 

141 



the land by those who drank of his swill 
and he was looked upon as respectable 
by those who did not even partake of his 
gifts. Still the great one and his herd of 
wild boais were not satisfied. To the 
swill taken from the bowels of the earth 
must needs be added the precious treasure 
from the mountains. There must be more 
blinding, maiming, gouging, and destruc- 
tion. It came to pass that other creatures, 
who, in outward form, were like unto the 
great one and his herd, were drawn into 
this sacrament of infamy and baptized 
into this communion of corruption. But 
the great one and his herd could not put 
rings in their noses, could not maim them 
with the ham string knife, and could not 
induce them to drink of the tainted swill 
at his troughs. More tainted swill was 
poured out in the Sunday School troughs 
but the children of light would none of 
it. To the many offers to drink they said 
"Nay", "Nay". More tainted swill was 
poured into the University troughs, but 
children of light would none of it. So 

142 



the great one was left with his tainted 
corrupting swill in his troughs, and holy 
men are now standing without his gates 
crying "Unlean", "Unclean". 

What shall the harvest be ? Shall it 
come to pass that as one woman was per- 
suaded to place in pawn her jewels and 
thereby help one man find a new world, 
that the firm stand of a few resolute souls 
shall yet redeem this new world from the 
grasp of the hogs? 



MORAL 

If you don't believe in the hog in 
business, drive him out of Sunday School. 
If you don't think the hog's money is 
clean, don't take it as a gift to buy swill. 
Don't take it to build churches. Don't 
take it to build libraries. Don't take it 
to endow universities. "The gift with- 
out the giver is bare". If you can't accept 
the hog, don't drink his tainted swill. 
Christ wouldn't have accepted all the 
money of all the money changers to buy 



swill for a starving pig. If you don't 
drink swill, take your nose out of the 
trough. If you are not a hog in business, 
in church, on principle, keep the swill out 
of your books, out of your sacrificial cups. 
Don't be a hog. 

The hog in Sunday School is one of 
the master wheels in the machine in poli- 
tics. He is the right hand of the boss 
who names candidates and carries elec- 
tions. His money controls votes. His 
stunt in Sunday School makes respectable 
the work of the boss in the saloon. The 
two are an equal part of the mighty power 
that brings the church and the brewery 
on the same platform. 

These two are the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 
Hyde of the church and Mephostopheles 
of politics. They foster panics and sow 
the microbes of strikes. They depress 
stocks and take them in. They inflate 
prices and then sell them out. They are 
the masters of high finance, the king pin 
of the trusts, the manipulators of rebates, 
the keepers of a lie. They make Gover- 

144 



nors, United States Senators, Congress- 
men and Judges. They own the courts 
and control the legislature. They "take 
over all public utilities". They control 
the railroads, traction and street car lines. 
They give passes to all public officers 
who have to deal with them. They have 
a mortgage on every lawyer before he 
gets to the seat of the judge. They bribe 
law-makers before they get to the legis- 
lature. 

Mighty is the hog in Sunday School 
and his power is increased because he is 
in league with the boss in the saloon. 

The honest yeomanry of the farms and 
the fields are counted on to keep them in 
power. If the man who has been named 
by the boss for Governor can be elected 
by votes from the farms, the boss in poli- 
tics will be lifted from the depths of the 
lowest dive to a seat in the United States 
Senate. 

Great are the hogs in Sunday Schools 
and saloons. Will they fool all the peo- 
ple all the time? Pulverize the boss. 
Pulverize the machine. 

145 



